TO the question of whether anyone will live long enough to ever see the end of the DFS furniture sale, there’s now another time-sensitive issue to assail this nation.

Thanks to our new coalition of Cons-Lib – how fitting that the first word should actually sum up what has befallen the second word – the age of state pension retirement is to increase from 65 to 66. Hoo-bloody-rah.

Well, England’s long-awaited arousal from World Cup torpor in South Africa may well have provided an answer to the chummy coalition’s dastardly plans to eke out yet more industry from the working-classes.

Team England’s reward for at last showing some pluck and passion against the might of Slovenia was to advance from the group straight into the knockout round, where the first hurdle is none other than the nation’s footballing nemesis – Germany.

If anything is guaranteed to age the spectating public it has got to be another episode in one of the game’s most enduring and emotive rivalries.

Just the last 15 minutes of the Group ‘C’ exchange between England and Slovenia added more grey hairs to the average bonce.

Come tomorrow afternoon in Bloemfontein, it could be full-on salt and pepper, or even full-on fright-white, barnets for everyone rooting for Fabio Capello’s hopefully fully reinvigorated charges.

Never mind the spirit of ’66 we could all be that much closer to the proposed new retiring age after a match which, given past history, could expand into nail-chewing extra-time and, if deadlock still prevails, then into, gulp, the ‘p’ word.

Those roast beef lunches, swilled down with appropriate bevy – bitter, lager, or maybe even mugs of steaming tea – will no doubt be the nationalistic dinner order of the day, but they will be more than a tad difficult to digest as events unfold, especially if more modern history than that Hurst-inspired afternoon 44 years ago is anything to go by.

The Germans – just wait for the jingoism-infected red-top names that will be used instead of plain Germany – hold an iron-cross grip over the wearers of the three-lions shirts. Why they even made Gazza cry and led Gareth to wearing a brown paper-bag over his head.

So as soon as that damned Yankee Donovan Landon or Landon Donovan or whoever, poached that last-breath strike to beat Algeria and top the group, relegating Blighty’s barely beloved to second place, then the ageing process started to kick in.

Germany, stewarded by the bizarrely attired coaching team led by Joachim Loew, have regularly swaggered as brashly as the strutting spot-kick torturer Andreas Moeller in Euro 1996, and always to the detriment of England.

But just as the impending reality of Saga holidays, beige zip-up cardigans and never-ending supplies of Werthers draws nearer its Sabbath conclusion, surely there is some hope we can peg back time and even overturn the expected unkind repeat of history.

After all, we have experience on our side.

England 2010 is the oldest World Cup squad this country has ever fielded. In contrast, Germany’s is the youngest they have sent to foreign lands in the quest for World Cup glory.

Then there’s the Roo-meister. Wayne’s World Cup whirl has been a mush of mediocrity until little, though tangible, signs against the Slovenians, hinted he was on the upswing again. That German defence is far from secure with the central axis of Per Metersacker and Arne Friedrich looking dodgier than an East German mullet.

However, England’s central core has a fragility that could be supremely tested by a crop of Teutonic forwards in the form of the canny Miroslav Klose and powerful Lukas Podolski. More grey hairs and wrinkles are guaranteed if those two get their act together.

Maybe it’s just time itself that gives grounds for a modicum of England optimism. It’s surely our turn to put Das Boot on the other foot and inflict some footballing anguish on our traditional arch-adversaries.

Against Slovenia, England at least, and at last, resembled a team, a unit capable of offering stern resistance at one end and creating openings at the other.

So come on England, let’s do the business, because at stake is a place in the quarter-finals and a likely showdown against – Argentina. Oh no, there’s another few more years on the clock.